


reflections on water

by saunatonttu



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Drabble, M/M, Multi, birthday drabble for Bestie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-19 04:56:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11890494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saunatonttu/pseuds/saunatonttu
Summary: Three men that Lovino draws and loves.





	reflections on water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Siwen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siwen/gifts).



> happy birthday, darling. i wish i could write a 10k+ fic out of them for you, but oh boy i really can't. although now i'm getting ideas as i'm writing this note...

Lovino doesn’t like painting, doesn’t like charcoal, doesn’t even like watercolour. He still practices all of them because he’s a goddamn masochist that can never get rid of his addictions. Like art. And pizza. Pepperoni. It matches his temperament, he’s told.

He’s sketching a bastard’s face right now. Tries to hate every second of it – he manages to when he can’t get the dip of the bastard’s cheek right. He has had literal centuries to perfect it, but there he fucking is, brow pinched and lips settled in a frown as he glares at a sleeping Antonio.

Antonio’s gotten skinnier since the last time Lovino’s drawn him. It’s never to the point where Antonio would look like the African kids on those brochures of Red Cross and Amnesty International, but it bothers Lovino anyway. Just because he can’t see Antonio’s ribs bruising at his stomach from the inside doesn’t mean he can’t picture it and grimace.

It’s why he likes to pretend to not give a shit, to have a shitty ass attitude.

Lovino inhales, tries not to snap his pencil in half, and continues, cross-logged over a terribly used couch as he glares at Antonio on the floor. It hasn’t been washed in a while.

If he gets sick, Lovino’s _not_ going to help him get better.

 

 

 

Francis loves to model, and as much as Lovino pretends it’s because Francis is an attention-seeking asshole, there’s another reason for it.

Lovino’s convinced the reason is to make him as flustered as possible because, _shit_ , is Francis successful at that. Now especially, lying on a literal bed of roses and making it look less ridiculous than it fucking should be.

“How the fuck do you do that,” Lovino demands to know, squeezing at the charcoal between his fingers. He’ll try not to rub at his face with that hand later, but he will fail. As usual. “That should look fucking ridiculous.”

Francis clicks his tongue at Lovino, peering up through his overgrown bangs of hair. Lovino wants to push them away from his eyes, like the cheesy asshole he has turned out to be. Francis looks at him, eyes all blue and hair like gold while the Italian countryside fills with rain and grey, and the roses burning red against the pale sheets.

“It is because you are attracted to me, no?” Francis winks at him after a beat of silence, his smile resembling a contented cat, his favourite animal in the whole wide world. Francis is allergic to cats, because irony is a Francis thing.

Lovino tries to imagine away the cat ears, he really does. But he’s bad at many things, and a master of failure when it comes to this.

 

 

 

Gilbert is the hardest to draw because Lovino’s technique doesn’t suit him. (Neither does Feliciano’s. Lovino is pleased.) He comes out either too fragile or too edgy on paper for Lovino’s tastes, and God only knows how many paper bins he has filled with failed attempts at Gilbert.

It makes him cry because…

well, Lovino cries a lot. The reason doesn’t really matter. He’s an ugly crier, too, and often sniffles into one of Gilbert’s band shirts the asshole leaves over. For every shirt Antonio and Francis leave behind, Lovino has three of Gilbert’s.

He doesn’t smell them when he goes to sleep because he’s not a fucking creep.

He does wear them, though.

Gilbert sometimes catches him in one, and his lips slide into that fireworks-bright grin that Lovino wants to avoid but which always pulls him in like one of those black holes born out of dead stars.

Lovino hates drawing Gilbert because the moments he wants to capture the most are these fleeting ones, the ones that cannot be replicated without strain and effort that is ill-suited on the current Gilbert.

The man’s like a ghost, and Lovino is inexplicably in love with that.

 

 

 

It’s not that he has more love to give than others. He would argue otherwise. In fact, he doesn’t even know why he feels like that about them. Some days he doesn’t know how they feel about him – those days he fills bin after bin with crumpled pieces of paper, the caricatures of those three staring at him with unforgiving stares that hurt him worse than any memory of battlefield. 

He just…

He’s selfish, clinging to them and demanding attention and pushing away when he gets it. But Francis goes to the Mass with him every Sunday, Antonio cooks great things with tomatoes, and Gilbert grins like the world is made for the four of them.

There’s something reassuring somewhere between the lines.


End file.
